The Music Settlement commits to West Side school in Cleveland's Ohio City (photos)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - A century-old institution on Cleveland's East Side plans to open a West Side outpost by late summer of 2017, bringing a preschool and music programs to a growing city neighborhood.

Board members at the Music Settlement in University Circle voted unanimously last week to push ahead with a project in Ohio City, just outside of downtown. The new school marks a dramatic expansion for an unusual nonprofit that provides early-childhood curricula, musical education and music therapy to nearly 7,000 people annually.

The 19,000-square-foot facility also will serve as a ground-floor anchor for a development designed to transform the intersection of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue.

The Music Settlement will sit just north of Detroit, in a 194-unit apartment building that also will feature a swimming pool and a local grocery store. On the south side of the street, the same developer expects to renovate the historic Forest City Bank Building and a neighboring property for low-income apartments over a coworking space, an art gallery and the existing Massimo da Milano restaurant.

A rendering shows the planned Snavely Group apartment building at the northwest corner of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue in Cleveland's Ohio City building. The Music Settlement plans to open a 19,000-square-foot school on the building's first floor. The historic Forest City Bank Building, at left, will be restored with low-income apartments on the upper floors.Vocon, Snavely Group

"It's the No. 1 component of the kind of service and change we're trying to do with the project, in terms of integrating uses," Pete Snavely, Jr. of the Snavely Group, the project's developer, said of the Music Settlement. "Our strategy is to identify things that weren't being served in that neighborhood and bring them to that neighborhood. It gives people of all different kinds an opportunity."

Founded in 1912, the Music Settlement started out providing free or low-cost musical training for newly arrived immigrants and their children. The school moved into a Magnolia Drive mansion in the late 1930s and gradually expanded into its current, four-building campus. The nonprofit also stretched beyond music education, adding a music-therapy program and community preschool and kindergarten.

Most of the students are school-age children, but the organization works with clients ranging from infancy to retirement. During the school's most recent fiscal year, 20 percent of its clients came from low-income households. Fifty-five percent of students who sought scholarships or financial aid received assistance.

As of Oct. 30, the school had 133 students enrolled in its day school, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten programs; more than 4,100 students participating in music programs; and more than 2,500 clients for its music-therapy programs, which include outreach at 25 off-campus partner sites.

Bridging a gap

Charlie Lawrence, the school's president and chief executive officer, describes the Music Settlement as a cultural, educational and geographic bridge-builder.

"We have a significant endowment that allows us to release around $250,000 to $300,000 in financial aid and scholarships every year," he said. "That's critical to our mission. We have open enrollment. We don't discriminate by musical talent or age. We're not a conservatory. We have a wonderful music program, but we're more about building great people, not necessarily great musicians."

The school's longtime campus straddles the rim of fast-growing University Circle and the Glenville neighborhood to the north. The West Side school, roughly half the size of its East Side counterpart, will occupy a hinge site between public housing north of the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway and the appreciating homes, multiplying apartments, bars and restaurants to the south.

Lawrence said the Music Settlement started looking seriously at Ohio City after a planning exercise that highlighted the need to reach new communities.

The Music Settlement received the Bop Stop building on Detroit Avenue as a donation in late 2013 and has been using the building for classes, performances and events. It will function as a performance space for the new West Side school, to open in late summer 2017.Steven Litt/The Plain Dealer

In late 2013, local donors gave the Music Settlement the shuttered Bop Stop building at 2920 Detroit Ave. as a venue for performances, events and classes. That donation came amid mounting investment in the surrounding area, which has picked up the "Hingetown" name during the last few years.

On its own, though, the Bop Stop is a bit of an island. Surveys showed strong demand in the community for early-childhood education, including preschool. And the Snavely project provided a high-profile location and the chance for the nonprofit to own its space, carved out of the apartment building like a condominium.

The Music Settlement is in the early, quiet phase of a capital campaign to raise $3 million for the project, which will be funded up-front using a bridge loan. The campaign also includes several million dollars for renovations at the East Side campus and additional endowment funds for operations and scholarships.

Two-thirds of the West Side space will be devoted to early-childhood programs. The remainder will be used for music education and music therapy. That's the inverse of what the Music Settlement offers on the East Side, where two-thirds of its space is dedicated to music programming.

The Ohio City school could draw 25 percent to 30 percent of its students from lower-income city neighborhoods and nearby Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority properties, Lawrence said.

"We're not building an institution there that's just for people who can pay full price," he added. "We're excited that [Snavely] is doing mixed-use housing on the other side of the street as well as high-end structures. There's a lot of housing going in within four blocks, and it's important for it to be a mix, not just high-end couples without children."

Assembling the pieces

Snavely, a family-owned company based in Chagrin Falls, plans to start construction early next year on the new apartments and open the building in August 2017.

Renters could pay $1,000 a month for a studio, $1,500 for a single bedroom or $2,000 for two. Along with the Music Settlement, ground-floor tenants will include a second location for the Grocery, an Ohio City retailer that emphasizes local and healthy products.

This parking lot, across from the Forest City Bank Building (left) and the Seymour Block (right), will be the site of a 194-unit apartment building with the Music Settlement's West Side school on the ground floor. The historic buildings will become 38 low-income apartments over a coworking facility, the existing restaurant and other businesses.Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Across the street, in the old Seymour Block building, an art gallery opened just after Thanksgiving. The Beauty Shoppe, a Pittsburgh-based operator of shared office spaces, plans to open a co-working space there next year.

Snavely is pursuing state historic-preservation tax credits to renovate the upper floors of the Seymour Block and Forest City Bank Building as 38 low-income apartments. The developer expects to seek low-income housing tax credits for that project next year and start construction in early 2017.

"We're not feeling that affordable housing and market-rate housing are exclusive," said Pete Snavely, Sr. "They can be integrated intelligently and appropriately. Especially in a market like Ohio City, it just represents the market. There's every human being in Ohio City, I think, that exists on the planet."

Most of the site at West 25th and Detroit belongs to the DiIorio family, including restaurateur Tony DiIorio of Massimo. Snavely is buying the DiIorio buildings and parking lot, plus a few smaller properties from other owners, for an undisclosed price. Those sales are set to occur during the first quarter of 2016.

To lay a foundation for the project this year, the city worked through a series of complicated transactions, including a swap-like land sale that yielded a better site for the developer and an expanded Masterson-Bivins Park, to be maintained by Snavely, at West 25th. The city approved two forgivable loans - grants, if the project creates enough jobs - of $180,000 each for the commercial spaces on either side of Detroit.

Cleveland also signed off on a 30-year tax-increment financing agreement that will divert the non-school portion of new tax revenues created by the project - roughly 38 percent - to paying off debt on the development. And the apartments are eligible for property-tax abatement, which the city routinely grants for new residences. Abatement will cut into the value of the TIF for the first 12-to-15 years.

Snavely is seeking a $2 million Cuyahoga County loan tied to job creation. The county's loan committee will consider that request in January, said Nathan Kelly, the interim development director.

The school and retail portions of the project also will benefit from an infusion of federal New Markets Tax Credits, meant to lure investment to low-income areas. The Ohio Finance Fund, an affiliate of Capital One bank and Cleveland Development Advisors all pledged chunks of highly coveted New Markets allocations to Snavely. Cleveland Development Advisors, a private-investment arm of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, tends to like real estate projects with a civic bent.

"These new young developers that come into town here, it's more than just doing a building and cash-flowing a structure," said Tracey Nichols, the city's economic-development director. "The mix of businesses that they put in is really civic-minded. And that's what I see here."

Anchoring the district

During the last few months, renters and condo owners from Ohio City and the Flats have joined residents of the low-income Lakeview Tower and families from nearby Lakeview Terrace to discuss ways to blur barriers in the neighborhood.

"What Pete [Snavely, Jr.] is doing, not just with the Music Settlement but with affordable housing in this development, is actually filling in a missing tooth in that abomination of surface parking," said Councilman Joe Cimperman, who represents the area. "What you have is not only an exciting development ... but also something like a balm."

Signs direct passersby at the intersection of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue in Ohio City.Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Neighbors have talked about better sidewalks, new trees, public art, brighter bridge underpasses, bike paths and stoplights to make treacherous intersections safer.

Discussions about pedestrians, cyclists and ambitious park space are part of a broader planning effort driven by the Snavely project, But they come at a time of abundant additional investment south of the Shoreway.

On West 25th, developers Rick Foran and Chris Smythe are remaking a rambling group of buildings as the West 25th Street Lofts. Property owners are working on other, smaller residential projects nearby.

Over on Detroit, developer Graham Veysey is floating short-term plans for apartments upstairs at the Schaefer Printing Co. building. But that property, at 2817 Detroit Ave. has obvious potential as a bigger development site.

To the west, near Veysey's other projects on West 29th Street, investor Brent Zimmerman is planning a revamp of the tattered-looking Steelman Building. Documents submitted to the Cleveland Landmarks Commission show retail, brewing facilities and a restaurant. Nearby, art collectors and philanthropists Fred and Laura Bidwell are renovating and moving into the historic Van Roy Building at 2900 Detroit Ave.

Tom McNair, executive director of the Ohio City Inc. nonprofit, said the Music Settlement's new school should provide an eastern anchor for an emerging cultural hub between downtown and the Gordon Square Arts District. Access to strong early-childhood education, he added, will give families more reason to move in or stay.

"I believe," McNair said, "the inclusion of the Music Settlement makes this the most significant development that has taken place in Ohio City in the past 10 years."